Shelters See Flood of Homeless Families

This week, the Washington Post called families the "new face of homelessness." But family homelessness is by no means a new, recession-induced phenomenon. Low-income, single parent households have for years been just one or two paychecks away from falling through the cracks. If anything, the depths of our current recession are simply bringing to light the vulnerability these families have been living with for decades. 

Still, this doesn't change the fact that more families are showing up in droves to shelters and housing assistance providers in need of assistance. The latest numbers from the Department of Housing and Urban Development show that the number of homeless families rose 9 percent last year. In rural and suburban areas, homeless families increased by a whopping 56 percent. All in all, more than half a million people who were members of a family used an emergency shelter or transitional housing between Oct. 1, 2007, and Oct. 1, 2008. That's a lot of people falling through the cracks.

So what does the average homeless family look like? According the the latest HUD data, women make up 81 percent of adults in homeless families. They often are younger than 30 with children younger than 5. 

While these numbers are disturbing, it's even more disconcerting that the HUD numbers don't even capture the number of families who may be homeless or on the verge of homelessness, but are not included in the current federal definition used for housing purposes. As the Washington Post article rightly points out, most families will utilize every single housing option possible before resorting to shelter, be it couches, floors, motels - you name it. Yet these types of "doubled-up" arrangements are not considered homeless by HUD.

That said, I don't necessarily think expanding the current federal definition of homelessness will solve this problem. Finding and counting every family living on Grandma's couch would simply compound the challenges of conducting homelessness counts. Therefore, we can only wonder how much higher the figures would be if every precariously housed/unhoused family were included in the HUD numbers.